We are excited to announce that after six years of agitating from the sidelines to open up political debates to more voices and better choices, we are taking our work to the next level.
We’ll be focusing on the small handful of statewide races in 2019 to test out our strategies and build momentum for 2020 with some local breakthroughs. We are confident that with the right organizing, we can grow our support to over 100,000 people in 2019 and one million strong in 2020—becoming a force that can no longer be ignored.
For the first time ever, we are raising money to fund the startup costs for getting Open the Debates off the ground as an effective national organizing vehicle on this critical issue, including the hiring of a full-time director. We hope to raise a total of $25,000 by January 2019, and another $100,000 by June, 2019.
Exclusionary political debates are one of the major roadblocks to new ideas entering the political discourse, and they are controlled by self-interested players who work to maintain the status quo because it works for them. But that is about to change.
Open the Debates will shine a bright spotlight on this dark corner of our political system and will organize a non-partisan and cross-partisan grassroots movement that will stand up for these fundamental small-d democratic principles: that our democratic republic is healthiest with a well-informed electorate and voters deserve to learn about all of the choices on the ballot.